Ashes of the Singularity PC Performance Review

1080p Testing with the GTX 960 and R9 380

When testing this game we decided to not use the game's built-in benchmarking tool, instead opting for a 60-second section of gameplay from the game's campaign which includes sections where we look at an empty base where we build a few units all and move towards a large battle scene in the distance.

The built-in benchmarking tool proved to provide very similar in-game performance when looking at comparable scenes.

When looking at our R9 380 and GTX 960 at low settings we see that both GPUs have very similar performance when using the DirectX 11 API, though when moving to DirectX 12 we that AMD's R9 380 has a large advantage.

In almost all cases in this Ashes of the Singularity, AMD GPUs have better performance when running DirectX 12 and Nvidia have better performance when using DirectX 11.

Moving up to standard settings we see that AMD gains a huge performance advantage when running with DirectX 12, offering a much higher average framerate, though please note that the minimum framerates that we have in large battle scenes remain similar for both GPUs.

AMD's R9 380 gains a lot of extra performance from DirectX 12 here, gaining 6FPS on both the minimum and average framerates at Standard settings, making the DirectX 12 API the clear way to play for AMD users.

Moving from Standard to High settings gives us a minor performance decrease for AMD though it does give us a significant performance loss for Nvidia's minimum framerate. When using the DirectX 11 API both the GTX 960 and the R9 380 deliver

When using the DirectX 11 API at high settings the GTX 960 and the R9 380 deliver almost identical performance, but with DirectX 12 the R9 380 gains a significant performance lead.

Moving to extreme settings we see similar trends to the lower settings, with AMD's R9 380 gaining a lot of extra performance when using the DirectX 12 API, with Nvidia's GTX 960 actually losing performance when moving to the new API.

Looking at these numbers it really shows how much Oxide Games worked to make good use of Asynchronous Compute with the new DirectX 12 API, giving AMD a significant lead in DirectX 12.

Most Recent Comments

Do you have 390(X), 970, 980 cards on hand to test? It would be good to see how these perform since so many gamers own them. In some games lately Hawaii has been getting pretty close to Fury(X) performance.

Do you have 390(X), 970, 980 cards on hand to test? It would be good to see how these perform since so many gamers own them. In some games lately Hawaii has been getting pretty close to Fury(X) performance.

Thanks,

Sadly I do not have an R9 390 or GTX 970 for performance testing.

All of the GPUs that I use for testing have been bought and paid for by me the writer and were not samples from an external party or sponsor. Hopefully we can get hold of more GPUs for gaming content in the future, especially when the next generation of GPUs are released.Quote

Right now only AMD GCN GPUs support Asynchronous Compute in their GPU drivers, though Nvidia is rumored to be adding support for this function to Maxwell in the future with a driver update, though this remains unconfirmed by Nvidia.

AMD supports it on a hardware level as well as driver level. Nvidia won't be releasing a driver for it, driver can't make up for hardware losses, it's not possible for Nvidia to implement such a feature.

I find it kind of funny that now AMD in DX11 are either slightly behind or just ahead. Nvidia really are struggling with this title, explains why they called Oxide out before. Hopefully as they push out more content it gets more optimized and less CPU limited in future updates/patches.Quote

I'd be more interested to see different CPUs used, from both Intel and AMD's offerings. Though I do appreciate that you don't have access to everything or necessarily the time either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeverBackDown

AMD supports it on a hardware level as well as driver level. Nvidia won't be releasing a driver for it, driver can't make up for hardware losses, it's not possible for Nvidia to implement such a feature.

I find it kind of funny that now AMD in DX11 are either slightly behind or just ahead. Nvidia really are struggling with this title, explains why they called Oxide out before. Hopefully as they push out more content it gets more optimized and less CPU limited in future updates/patches.

Oxide most likely focused on GCN optimization which kind of explains why Nvidia benefit on DX11. Not sure how you know Nvidia can't support async compute, they don't really share architecture notes.Quote

I'd be more interested to see different CPUs used, from both Intel and AMD's offerings. Though I do appreciate that you don't have access to everything or necessarily the time either.

Oxide most likely focused on GCN optimization which kind of explains why Nvidia benefit on DX11. Not sure how you know Nvidia can't support async compute, they don't really share architecture notes.

Even in dx11, they aren't much better as everything gets higher resolution or settings. I doubt it's mostly AMD focused, it uses asynchronous compute. Nvidia doesn't have it and therefore probably results to context switching to do both compute and graphic work so it adds latency and therefore decrease framerate. AMD called out Nvidia at GDC that you can't support it at a driver level. In addition, it's been what 6 months and we've had no comment or hints from Nvidia about this "rumored" magic driver. I think it's more likely that got started by people saying, "wait for them to release a driver for the game". I don't even think Nvidia has a proper driver for it yet.. or not for a while. Which makes sense since they called out Oxide saying its not represenitive of a real dx12 title and begging them not to use asynchronous compute. That's just them being sore losers tbh. Nothing wrong with admitting that they can't support it but will try to get the best performance possible anyway. They haven't done this for any other dx12 title, it's just because they lose by far in this oneQuote

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